Labour rebels turn up heat with call to kickstart leadership contest

Gordon Brown faces fresh dissent from some of his MPs days before Labour’s party conference. Photograph: Mark Large/AP

The rebel backbench Labour MPs calling for a leadership challenge to Gordon Brown will step up their campaign by demanding the party's ruling body issue nomination papers for a leadership contest when it meets tomorrow.

The NEC will decide at a pre-party conference meeting whether to take the unprecedented step of bowing to backbench pressure and releasing nomination papers for the role of leader of the Labour party.

It emerged over the weekend that nine MPs had written asking for the resumption of the once annual process of refreshing the post of Labour leader in advance of the party's annual conference.

Siobhain McDonagh, the former assistant whip sacked on Friday after it was revealed she had called for the nomination papers, said: "They [the NEC] can't read the Labour party's rules and not see there is a case to issue the nomination papers. It's very much all to play for."

But yesterday there were signs that the rebels would get short shrift from the NEC despite one of the dissenting MPs, Janet Anderson, also being on the ruling body. NEC member Peter Wheeler told the Guardian that it was unlikely to issue nomination papers.

The move follows a weekend of high drama after the emergence of McDonagh's challenge to Brown on Friday afternoon. By yesterday a further seven MPs had declared publicly against the prime minister, including Joan Ryan, the Labour party vice-chair, Fiona Mactaggart, the former Home Office minister, Janet Anderson, George Howarth, Graham Stringer, Jim Dowd, Frank Field and Greg Pope.

The rebellion led to another weekend of terrible headlines for Brown, but he could take comfort in some good news yesterday when he received the unequivocal support of the foreign secretary, David Miliband, who earlier this summer appeared to be positioning himself to mount a possible leadership challenge.

"I think there's a recognition from the top of the party down, from Gordon down, that these are very, very challenging times for the Labour party," Miliband said. "We've got to make sure that we've not just got a lot of policies that address the needs of people, we've also got to make sure that we are telling a story about the country that is actually convincing to people."

The news that a group of MPs were calling for the resurrection of an arcane Labour party process - nomination papers sent out annually just ahead of the party conference - to oust the PM disrupted the relative calm that had broken out at Westminster. Labour MPs had appeared to come round to the view that it was better to sit tight than force an early leadership election.

Male MPs said the tactic had been for women to front the challenge since Downing Street's machismo would find it difficult to quash a female rebellion. McDonagh told the Guardian it was nothing to do with her gender, and said she found the idea that she must have been put up to it, "insulting".

Barry Gardiner, another MP calling for Brown to go, said he did not regard it to be a "plot", although he thought the two women sacked over the weekend - McDonagh and Ryan - had been operating as a team.

"I bumped into Siobhain [McDonagh] and Joan [Ryan] having coffee in Portcullis House the week before last. They told me what they were doing, then asked if they could excuse themselves before walking off to the post office together."

Frank Field had had the idea much earlier in the summer but had been warned off it.

He said: "I first thought of it just before parliament rose for recess and asked the chairman of the PLP to hold a debate on the process but he said, 'you can't do that Frank, you're a usual suspect.' So imagine my delight when I saw Siobhain on the TV."

Many MPs believe the news of the mini rebellion was leaked late on Friday by Downing Street, at the end of a relatively good week for Brown, in an attempt to pre-empt the uprising and get it into the public domain, rather than see it unfold at party conference, which starts at the weekend. "Clearly the idea now is to isolate the rebels and turn the party conference into a massive show of unity," one MP said.